t 

5  3  W|  -  >Y*  Iwd, 


of  thf  ISeathnt  a 


fitatittrituf  Pork 


Henry  C.  Mabie,  D.  D. 


American  Baptist  Missionary  Union 
Tremont  Temple,  Boston,  Mass, 


The  Evangelization  of  the  Heathen 
a  Distinctive  Work 


The  Essence  of  Evangelization 

THE  essence  of  evangelization  is  to  make 
known  to  those  who  are  ignorant  of  it, 
the  work  accomplished  for  them  by  the 
atonement  of  Christ.  This  atonement  has 
its  peculiar  worth  in  the  kind  of  death  Christ 
died  in  behalf  of  mankind.  This  death  was 
more  than  mere  mortal  dying;  it  was  a  judg¬ 
ment-death.  That  is,  it  was  a  judicial  death, 
necessitated  by  the  relation  of  the  divine  gov¬ 
ernment  to  sinners  needing  to  be  ransomed 
from  the  guilt  and  power  of  sin.  Hence,  it 
was  something  vastly  more  than,  and  intrin¬ 
sically  different  from,  mere  martyrdom. 

Bronson  Alcott,  the  transcendental  philoso¬ 
pher,  at  one  time  introduced  into  his  boys’ 
school  in  Boston  a  form  of  discipline  which 
might  be  called  judgment-infliction.  For  a 
certain  transgression  the  master  himself  in¬ 
stead  of  the  pupil  was  to  receive  the  punish¬ 
ment.  The  first  time  it  was  applied,  the  cul¬ 
prit  broke  down,  and  the  school  broke  down. 


3 


In  principle,  this  gracious  judgment-inflic¬ 
tion  was  akin  to  that  which  under  grace  is 
employed  in  the  atonement;  and  for  a  saving 
mastery  over  human  nature  the  principle  is 
unequalled. 

The  judgment-death  of  Jesus  was  a  purely 
voluntary  matter,  costing  the  Father  no  less 
of  sacrifice  than  it  did  the  Son.  Jesus  “tasted 
(spiritual)  death  for  every  man.”  He  thus 
dealt  as  the  moral  situation  required  with  the 
vast  issues  involved,  as  between  God  and  the 
sinner  —  issues  which  Satan  as  the  person¬ 
alized  head  of  the  realm  of  spiritual  evil  had 
occasioned.  In  so  dealing,  the  judgment- 
death  of  Jesus,  in  principle,  embraced  every 
last  moral  reality  that  can  enter  into  the  final 
judgment.  For  example,  he  acknowledged 
and  endured  in  his  experience,  the  due  judg¬ 
ment  which  attached  to  the  sin-principle ;  he 
set  at  nought,  cast  out,  and  judged  to  its  de¬ 
struction,  as  unworthy  of  recognition  in  hu¬ 
man  life,  the  world-principle  or  self-principle, 
of  which  Satan  is  the  author ;  he  broke  the 
bond  between  sin  and  death  which  the  fall 
occasioned  ;  and  he  brought  in  as  a  reversion¬ 
ary  right  and  treasure,  all  mankind,  poten¬ 
tially,  to  be  his  own. 


4 


A  Microcosm  of  the  Last  Judgement* 

In  these  important  respects  the  death  of 
Christ  was  amicrocosm  of  the  last  judgement ; 
it  turns  that  judgement  into  a  potential  salva¬ 
tion,  even  a  coronation  day,  for  all  mankind, 
if  they  can  but  know  and  avail  themselves  of 
its  benefits.  That  judgement-death  antici¬ 
pated  every  moral  issue  that  can  cause  dread 
to  the  human  soul  as  it  looks  forward  to  the 
last  day.  The  penal  difficulty  with  respect 
to  past  sin  was  potentially  met ;  sin  can  be 
pardoned.  Satan,  man’s  arch  enemy,  was 
potentially  destroyed ;  the  accuser  will  have 
no  standing  in  that  final  court.  The  power 
of  indwelling  sin  was  potentially  broken ;  we 
need  not  spiritually  and  finally  die.  And 
man,  sinner  though  he  is,  is  potentially  the 
ransomed  of  the  Lord.  It  is  in  anticipating 
and  providing  for  all  these  things  that  the 
divine  love  has  its  peculiarity  and  precious¬ 
ness.  On  the  basis  of  such  love,  man,  if 
penitent  and  believing,  may  cherish  the  cer¬ 
tain  hope  of  becoming  ultimately  a  holy,  as 
well  as  a  redeemed  being. 

All  this  was  in  view  when  Jesus,  facing  his 
coming  death,  said,  “Now  is  the  judgement 
of  this  world ;  now  shall  the  prince  of  this 


5 


world  be  cast  out ;  and  I,  if  I  be  lifted  up  from 
the  earth  will  draw  all  .  .  .  unto  myself.”  In 
this  text  we  have  the  assertion  that  through 
the  cross,  all  men  are  drawn  into  new,  final, 
judgement-relations,  because  of  certain  values 
and  implications  in  that  cross.  That  cross, 
when  its  meaning  shall  stand  revealed,  will 
prove  the  touch-stone  of  all  character  and 
destiny. 

The  Heathen  Destitute  of  this  Microcosm 

Now  the  heathen  world,  without  revelation, 
is  wholly  destitute  of  the  benefit  of  this  great 
anticipatory  judgement  which  took  place 
in  the  soul  of  Christ.  They  have  nothing 
(adequate)  to  prepare  them  for  their  final 
destiny  ;  nothing  except  what  may  be  derived 
from  the  poor  hints  which  exist  in  their  nat¬ 
ural  consciences,  and  that  as  fallen  and  per¬ 
verted.  That  is  better  than  nothing.  God 
will  not  despise  it ;  he  will  have  regard  to  it, 
so  far  as  it  goes.  In  the  last  day,  on  the 
ground  of  the  cross-enactment,  such  of  the 
heathen  as  in  their  interior  moral  attitude 
before  him  have  regarded  their  highest  light, 
may  be  acquitted. 

Ramke,  one  of  the  first  two  converts  from 
the  Garos  in  Assam,  before  he  ever  heard  of 


6 


Christianity,  seems  to  have  been  in  this 
moral  attitude.  While  all  Ramke’s  people 
were  devil  worshipers,  Ramke  refused  to 
propitiate  evil  spirits,  stoutly  asserting  that 
there  was  one  great,  good  spirit,  far  above  all 
the  evil  spirits  feared  by  his  countrymen. 
Ramke  worshipped  him.  Accordingly,  when 
Dr.  Bronson,  the  missionary,  met  him  and 
*  preached  the  love  of  God  in  Christ,  Ramke 
promptly  accepted  the  gospel. 

Said  a  heathen  Chinese  woman  to  her 
neighbor,  as  they  heard  a  missionary  describe 
the  loving  character  of  the  Christian  God, 
“  Didn’t  I  tell  you  that  there  ought  to  be  a  God 
like  that  ?”  Grant  that  these  are  exceptions 
to  the  great  multitude,  yet  let  us  thank  God 
that  they  exist.  God  only,  who  sees  the 
heart,  knows  whether  they  be  few  or  many. 
But  even  though  the  possibility  of  a  sort  of 
embryonic  or  infantine  salvation  exists  for 
some,  yet  who  would  admit  for  a  moment  that 
this  is  sufficient  for  the  heathen  ? 

The  Natural  Conscience  of  the  Heathen 
Insufficient# 

Without  the  light  of  Christ’s  historic  cross, 
the  heathen  certainly  cannot  be  saved  in  any 
such  assured,  full  and  glorious  way  as  God 


7 


desires,  and  as  they  need.  They  can  have 
no  certainty  of  salvation ;  almost  universally 
they  live  under  the  tortures  of  superstitious 
fears ;  and  they  are  without  the  converting, 
educating,  transforming  and  sanctifying  pow¬ 
er  of  the  first  judgement  in  the  cross.  Then 
how  woeful  is  their  estate !  The  great  thing 
the  heathen  need,  in  order  that  they  may  have 
a  confident  and  “  abundant  entrance  into  the 
everlasting  kingdom  of  our  Lord,”  is  the 
benefit  of  the  great  anticipatory  judgment 
expressed  in  Christ’s  cross.  Could  they  have 
this,  as  we  do,  in  advance  of  the  great  day 
itself,  they  might  lay  hold  of  that  which  is 
both  “  the  wisdom  of  God  and  the  power  of 
God.”  The  denial  of  this,  age  after  age,  to 
the  heathen,  is  their  spiritual  poverty  and 
the  Church’s  crime. 

Thus  our  very  possession  of  the  knowledge 
that  the  death  of  Christ  was  a  saving  judge¬ 
ment-death,  while  the  heathen  are  wholly 
without  such  knowledge,  places  the  matter  of 
giving  it  to  them  on  an  entirely  distinctive 
plane  of  Christian  enterprise,  and  constitutes 
a  unique  obligation.  It  is  a  work  unlike  in 
kind  to  the  work  of  edification — confessedly 
secondary,  however  important  —  which  is 


8 


carried  on  as  between  Christians,  among 
themselves.  Christendom  has  the  advantage 
of  the  opportunity  of  meeting  the  judgment- 
day  in  advance  of  its  arrival,  while  the  heathen 
have  not. 

Evangelization  as  Distinguished  from  Rendering 

Evangelical 

Real  as  is  the  duty  in  its  place,  to  edify 
the  Church  and  to  extend  it  in  all  lands  where 
it  exists,  yet  the  obligation  to  the  heathen 
and  to  Christ,  is  that  of  creating  the  Church, 
of  giving  existence  to  it  where  now  its  exist¬ 
ence  is  impossible.  The  duty  in  a  Christian 
land  is,  so  far  as  we  may,  to  keep  Christendom 
evangelical,  it  already  having  been  evangel¬ 
ized  ;  while  the  duty  to  heathen  people  is  that 
of  downright  fundamental  evangelizing,  or  in 
other  words  of  giving  them  the  benefit  of  that 
judgment  which  has  already  occurred  at  the 
center  of  the  world’s  moral  history,  in  Cal¬ 
vary’s  cross. 

When,  therefore  it  is  said,  as  it  often  is, 
that  “missions  are  missions,  they  are  all  one,” 
the  language  is  used  in  a  confusing  sense. 
“  Missions  ”  are  not  “  missions  ”  when  the 
term  “  missions  ”  is  used  in  two  senses,  any 
more  than  a  nursery  is  a  university.  Both 


9 


these  are  educational  institutions,  but  their 
functions  are  widely  different.  So  missions, 
in  the  sense  of  effotrs  to  introduce  Christian¬ 
ity  where  it  before  was  impossible,  are  a  work 
standing  upon  a  plane  by  itself;  they  are  en¬ 
tirely  sui  generis.  Missions  which  seek  to 
edify  churches  already  existing  in  communi¬ 
ties  which  have  long  had  the  gospel  are  some¬ 
thing  different  in  kind ;  such  missions  also 
stand  on  their  own  distinctive  plane.  Doubt¬ 
less  both  forms  of  work  are  obligatory,  even 
reciprocal  in  their  relations.  It  is,  however, 
only  just  to  the  interest  of  truth,  to  the  divine 
realities  involved  in  the  case,  and  to  mission 
work  itself  of  all  kinds,  that  we  use  terms 
with  accuracy  ;  and  that  we  discountenance 
the  growing  habit  of  obliterating  distinctions 
which  in  the  very  nature  of  things  exist,  be¬ 
tween  different  forms  of  Christian  work. 
For  these  are  distinctions  which  the  Scrip¬ 
tures  make  and  emphatically  teach. 

Missions  of  whatever  kind,  in  so  far  as 
they  are  true,  the  product  of  the  Spirit  of  God, 
are  of  course  one  in  spi?-it\  but  they  ought 
never  to  be  represented  as  one  in  kind,  or  as 
serving  the  same  functions.  The  tendency  to 
class  all  forms  of  mission  work  alike  as  “  one 


10 


work”  overlooks  the  distinction  above  point¬ 
ed  out,  and  the  result  is  to  level  down  the 
higher  forms  of  work  to  the  grade  of  the  lower. 
On  the  lower  grounds  the  higher  forms  cannot 
flourish.  The  higher  work  is  thus  often  ob¬ 
scured  altogether. 

Variant*  Planes  of  Mission  Effort* 

Certain  forms  of  effort,  denominated  “  mis¬ 
sions,  ”  are  justified  in  popular  appeal  upon 
the  ground  that  they  are  humane,  prudential, 
philanthropic,  self-preservative,  etc.,  results 
in  themselves  good ;  but  secondary  when 
measured  by  the  evangelical  standard. 

When  missions,  as  thus  understood,  are 
syndicated  and  argued  on  these  lower  grounds 
of  sentiment,  however  worthy  the  sentiment, 
the  plea  for  them  is  practically  removed  from 
the  distinctive  Christain  basis,  the  evangeli¬ 
cal  basis,  to  a  confessedly  lower  plane.  Of 
course  corresponding  harm  then  accrues  to 
that  form  of  work  which  derives  its  central 
motive  and  incitement  from  the  anticipatory 
values  in  Christ’s  cross.  So,  also,  correspond¬ 
ing  dishonor,  even  though  not  intended,  is 
done  to  Christ.  God’s  sensitive  point  is  the 
regard  in  which  Christ’s  judgement-death  is 


n 


held.  This  is  the  supreme  reality ;  and  afford¬ 
ing,  as  it  does,  the  chief  reason  for  the  evan. 
gelizatton  of  the  heathen,  no  intelligent  Chris¬ 
tian  can  be  indifferent  to  its  suppression  or 
obscuration. 

The  work  of  evangelizing  pagans  must 
always  stand  on  a  plane  entirely  distinct  from 
the  work  of  edification  of  others  than  pagans 
in  evangelical  aims  and  ideals.  Moreover, 
this  form  of  mission  work  is  primary,  elemen¬ 
tal  and  foundational  in  Christianizing  the 
world. 


1  ED.,  5M.-4,  *  04. 


12 


